The Long House

When we went to Kuching, Sarawak we ended up going on a homestay at a longhouse. This was a magical experience. Two night and three days staying at an Iban Longhouse about two hours up the Skrang river. This was our host, he was really good and worked hard to make sure we were looked after.

The Long House Chief was a friendly man. He seemed to spend a lot of his time doing jobs in and arouind the longhouse. He was very proud of his tattoes, which included an interesting pattern on his throat.

On our first night we were treated to a display of local culture and dance. These guys were really happy and got us all up to dance with them.

Check out the rainbow over the top of the trees. We had quite a lot of rain while we were there but we did manage to get out and spend a proportion of day two treking through rice, rubber and pepper planting in the hills.

Each family works their plantings and they bring the produce back to the long house and they dry it out on their family area. In this case there is pepper, rice and rubber drying out in the sun on the deck.

When we went treking we had lunch beside a stream, it was all cooked in bamboo. The fish and chicken was skewered and cooked over the flame. The bamboo in the picture contains rice, palm shoots, fern shoots and they even placed water in the bamboo to make a brew of tea. It was quite a feast.